Source: Vander Plaats asked Bachmann to quit

DES MOINES – Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats called Michele Bachmann and urged her to drop out of the race and endorse Rick Santorum, a source with knowledge of the conversation told POLITICO Tuesday.

Bachmann declined, the source said, noting to Vander Plaats that she has consistently polled ahead of Santorum in the race and still does.

Vander Plaats did not return repeated phone and text messages about the conversation Tuesday.

Evangelical, social conservatives have splintered between Santorum, Bachmann and Rick Perry in this year’s Iowa race. That dilution has left their leaders worried about the diminished influence they’ll have on picking the caucus winner, and ultimately, the Republican nominee.

Chuck Hurley, the president of the Iowa Family Policy Center who endorsed Santorum alongside Vander Plaats, said the Christian conservative movement would be better off if coalescing around a single candidate.

“It just makes a lot of sense to me,” he said. “You need a team to run a country. So this isn’t about one person, this isn’t just about Rick Santorum.”

Though two representatives of Santorum’s campaign attended the event at an Urbandale hotel, Vander Plaats said that he gave no advance notice of the endorsement ahead of his press conference here Tuesday morning.

“We did not inform any of the candidates before this because of coordination issues between [501]c4s and campaigns and stuff,” Vander Plaats said at the event.

Hurley said then that he had not asked any candidate to drop out of the race.

“I refuse to take a swing at somebody and diminish what they think is their God-ordained role. I refuse to do that,” he said. “What I would say instead of quote, drop-out, unquote, is why can’t the top three or so pro-family candidates come together and figure out who has the talent for president, who has the talent for other roles in the federal government, whether it’s attorney general, secretary of state, vice president, Health and Human Services secretary, and those people could quickly, with the 10-10-10 situation [in the polls], could quickly vaunt into first place, win the Iowa caucus and win the nomination.”

Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan said Perry spoke with Vander Plaats on Friday, but dropping out and backing Santorum “absolutely did not come up.”

Bachmann’s campaign declined to comment on the conversation but noted that she has been endorsed by a long list of evangelical leaders in the state.

Among them are Pastors Matt Floyd, Bill Tvedt and Brad Cranston and faith leader Tamara Scott, whom the campaign released a statement of support from following the Family Leader’s announcement that it would stay neutral earlier Tuesday.

“The defense of marriage has been the highest priority of Bob Vander Plaats and The Family Leader, and Michele Bachmann has been a bold leader at both the state level and in Washington, D.C. She has met every criterion that the Family Leader has established,” the statement read. “Iowans of faith know that Michele Bachmann, more than any other candidate in the race, can be counted on to defend and encourage the traditional, Christian values that made our country the greatest nation on Earth. She remains completely deserving of the Family Leader’s full endorsement.”